The "Text Against Terror" project wasted nearly $6 million & failed to provide any credible tips.
The U.S. government has blown nearly $6 million on an experimental “anti-terrorism” program in New Jersey that encourages the public to send tips via text message from their cellular phones.
Since it was launched in mid-2011, the federally-funded “Text Against Terror” project has produced no credible tips, according to a local newspaper report that reveals the feds have poured $5.8 million into the initiative. Police in New Jersey claim 307 tips have been texted so far and that includes people “testing the system.”
Of the 307 text messages, 71 “referred to something regarding homeland security,” according to the New Jersey police chief quoted in the story. The majority of the 71 texts were investigated, the chief says, and “eliminated as a cause for concern.” In other words, the costly program, funded with a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) public awareness grant, is a cash cow that’s accomplished nothing.
In other words, only roughly 23 percent of the messages mentioned something related to homeland security. The majority of that small percentage of the texts did not lead to any further investigation.
“Someone saw something that made them uncomfortable that required us to take secondary action, like an unattended bag or someone taking pictures in a particular area,” New Jersey transit police chief Christopher Trucillo said to Asbury Park Press.
According to Trucillo it is only rarely that they “need to follow them up and refer them to the (state) Joint Terrorism Task Force.”
The taxpayer dollars have paid for advertising time on local radio and television as well as fliers and ads on buses and trains. Other expenses include reserving a domain for unlimited texting capability. In a “rare instance” when a tip has required a follow-up, the New Jersey police chief says a state Joint Terrorism Task Force is available to get the job done. It includes state police, New Jersey’s transit and port authority police and the FBI.
News of this disturbing waste of public funds for an ineffective homeland security program comes on the heels of a U.S. Senate report blasting a huge post-9/11 counterterrorism program that’s received north of $300 million but hasn’t provided any useful intelligence. Even scarier is that DHS has covered up the mess from both Congress and the public, according to the bi-partisan investigators who conducted the lengthy probe.
Oddly enough, some of the ads aired on radio and television in New York City, which, according to Homeland Security News Wire, “has some of the highest advertising rates in the country.”
Using the federal funds, they ramped up the number of commercials promoting the campaign from August 27 to September 8, airing a whopping 4,023 ads on radio and television during that period.
The inept domestic counterterrorism program features fusion centers that are supposed to share terrorism-related information between state, local and federal officials. But nine years and more than $300 million later, the national centers have failed to provide any valuable information, according to Senate investigators.
Instead they have forwarded “intelligence of uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.” A review of more than a year of fusion center reports nationwide determined that they were irrelevant, useless or inappropriate.
None uncovered any terrorist threats nor did they contribute to the disruption of an active terrorist plot, the Senate report says. In fact, DHS officials acknowledged that the information produced by the fusion centers was “predominantly useless.” One branch chief actually said “a bunch of crap is coming through.” Evidently, the same thing applies to the costly New Jersey text experiment.
The Text Against Terror program is just a micro example of the runaway costs of the War on Terror. It seems almost ironic that the project began in June 2011 at approximately the same time Reuters reported on the staggering costs of the wars. Reuters wrote that the total cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan will reach as high as $3.7 trillion dollars, a figure they borrowed from the research project “Costs of War” by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.
Additionally, in 2013 alone, the cost of the Department of Homeland Security will run taxpayers $35.5 billion for its national security activities, according to the White House website.
Using figures from various federal government agencies and budgets, TomDispatch.com reported that the total cost of national security for 2013 will be approximately $930 billion. Putting that figure into perspective, TomDispatch.com writes, “If our national security budget were its own economy, it would be the 19th largest in the world, roughly the size of Australia’s. Meanwhile, the country with the next largest military budget, China, spends a mere pittance by comparison. The most recent estimate puts China’s military funding at around $136 billion.”
The National Priorities Project has determined that the total cost of spending in defense and homeland security since the attacks of September 11, 2001 is more than $7.6 trillion.
For more fully documented facts on the Solyndra debacle, Obama’s Watergate: Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration’s $20 billion extortion scheme and more order the New York Times best selling book The Corruption Chronicles by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton here.
View the trailer for Judicial Watch’s upcoming blockbuster documentary The District of Corruption here.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2012/10/5-8-mil-text-against-terror-fails-to-provide-any-tips/
http://endthelie.com/2012/10/11/new-jersey-nonsensically-claims-dhs-funded-text-against-terror-program-is-a-success/
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/13240-nj-$57m-anti-terror-program-a-practical-and-fiscal-failure